One Week
by Mirrordance
Summary: “I'm sorry but you have to let me do this, Sam,” Dean begged. He found a desperate solution to his problem: Colt back in his hands,he wondered if it would be better to just off himself and be dead to life and what came after it, than to end up in hell.


Author:Mirrordance

Title:One Week

Summary:"I'm sorry but you have to let me do this, Sam," Dean said.He found a desperate solution to his problem:Colt back in his hands,he wondered if it would be better to just shoot himself and be dead to life and what came after it, than to end up in hell.

Timeline:_One Week_ will be picking up post-_Jus In Bello_ of Supernatural Season 3. Basically, it will be an AU from there since I don't know what Kripke and Co. have in store for us for the rest of the life of the show, and I'm just dying to pen my idea of how Dean's demon deal could be resolved (or further complicated; it depends on your general pessimism, I guess, haha). I've come up with a few depressing ones and this is one of them. Seven chapters for Dean's last seven days.

" " "

**One Week**

" " "

1: Seven

_New York, New York_

_7 Days Left_

" " "

It started out like this: His brother had a year left to live.

A year is a very short time in which to live, but undoubtedly, the idea of something being a year away also, inextricably tended to give one the illusion that you still had some time left; time to think, time to plan, time to spend together, just..._time_. In general.

There are 12 months in 1 year. 12 sounded larger and longer than 1 so Sam stuck by that counting system instead. Dean had 12 months left to live, or, similarly, Sam had 12 months to look for a Solution to their Problem.

As the months rolled by, 1, 3, 8, 11... and then the time dwindled down to Dean having just a month left, he started counting in weeks. 4 weeks sounded longer than 1 month, so he started counting in weeks instead. Dean had 4 weeks left to live, or, preferably, he had 4 weeks to look for a Way Out of their Predicament.

As the weeks rolled by, 1, 2, 3... and then the time dwindled down to Dean having just a week left, he started counting in days. 7 days sounded longer than 1 week, so he started counting in days instead. Dean had 7 days left to live, or, _desperately_, he had 7 days to look for Salvation from... from _That Place_ where he'd end up if Sam failed.

When he started considering thinking about his brother's life in minutes, he knew they were in trouble, because no matter the perspective, no matter the delusion, the sound, the preference and the complete and utter _desperation_, no matter what he called the passage of time and, more importantly, what remained of it, it sure as hell was running out.

There are 525,600 minutes in one year. Dean had already blazed through 515,520 of them. One week left, _aka_ 7 days, _aka_ 168 hours _aka_ 10,080 minutes.

Sam glanced at the clock on his spanking brand new mobile phone.

_Make that 10,079_...

It was his one vice, this fixation for cutting-edge mobile phones. His father had been satisfied with just a call and text function, typical of his late old man, really, who had about as much patience for instruction manuals and complicated changes than was deemed healthy. His older brother was set to follow the same path, up until Dean, through Sam, realized (1) the finer points of how a flip phone kind-of just made him look more cool; and (2) all the mischief and mayhem a cellphone equipped with a camera could potentially create. In one of Sam's weaker, little-brothers-have-a-right-to-snoop moments, he had looked at the photos in Dean's phone to find several of him asleep (spoon on his mouth, drooling, and other items of bleak, black nature), indulgent photos of all the angles of the Impala, and a fair scattering of scantily-clad women.

_Me, the car and half-naked women_, he had thought, amused, wondering if he should feel honored. He noticed that his brother had no photographs at all of himself.

Sam had looked through his own phone, and noted that he had none of Dean either. All that he had were photos of symbols and a miscellany of documentation, all of course, at this point, relating to demon deals and how to work around them.

_If I fail to save you_, he thought, suddenly, and wrenchingly, _I will have almost nothing to look at, once in awhile. Nothing to show any wife or any kids I might have one day, of who the man who raised me and had saved my life was. My brother. _

_Faceless ghost..._

It was that thought that had driven him to the FBI's website to right-click at Dean's mugshot and save it to his My Pictures folder. He went to the Biggerson's website and did the same of a photo of Dean and himself posing with their fast food winnings. He saved a few sketches from police artists and witnesses, and basically everything else that he could scrunch up. There wasn't a lot; Dean was like their father, and the two of them were almost like ghosts.

It was that same thought that eventually led the two brothers down to Manhattan about a day after they wrapped a haunt in upstate New York, standing like miserable, misplaced, plaid-wearing back-country-boys beneath the neon lights of the countless and undoubtedly overpriced billboards and towering buildings of Times Square. Because Sammy wanted a picture. Because they might fail. Because if they failed, they were down to..._10,078 minutes_.

"This is embarrassing," Dean growled at Sam, as his younger brother put an arm around his shoulders, and then raised up his other arm as he took a picture of the two of them with his handy camera-phone.

"Say cheese!" Sam said, grinning, finding macabre amusement in his brother's abject misery over living out the tourist stereotype.

Dean put up a finger.

Sam ignored the editorial. It wasn't the first picture they had taken since Sam got the idea in his head, nor was it the first complaint. Won't be the last of either, either.

"Seriously, dude," Dean said, "What the hell is up with you and this picture thing?"

"I told you," Sam said, evasively looking at the picture instead of at his brother's face, "I got this new model, and I'm trying to work it out."

"Geek-boy," muttered Dean, looking around at all the smiling, gawking tourists around them and wincing, "You sure the car's safe where we parked it?"

"I'm sure, Dean," Sam sighed, "For the hundredth time--"

"Maybe we should get back," Dean said, scratching his neck, looking ill-at-ease, "All these happy people kind of give me the creeps."

Sam chuckled, and shook his head at his brother, "I thought maybe you'd wanna play tourist for a little while."

Dean looked at him in a long, measuring way. Of course they both knew Sam's attitude had something to do with his expiring deal. Everything Sam said and did, had something to do with that, nowadays. The jobs that they took always seemed to put them in the way of someone to ask, something to try, not excluding this last one, which, like the others, had been another crippling disappointment. Sam was suddenly struck by the possibility that Dean was thinking he had already given up.

"I haven't given up," he said quickly, deciding to go for the guttural, and kill that thought right away, "Never will. It's just that--"

"I like New York," Dean said, suddenly, as per usual, not wanting to broach this topic, "We can chill out here for awhile if you like."

"Dean," Sam began, feeling at a loss, as to how to explain all this, "We're not... not gonna..." _fail_, his mind filled in, as they had never, _ever_ put such a forbidden thought to irredeemable breath and word, "But we've both been working so hard, you know--"

That didn't come out so well, either. Was Dean going to think he was getting tired, needed a break? Need a break now, with so little time left? But why was the truth so damn hard to say?

"I just wanna hang out with you, all right?" Sam said, exasperated with himself. Simple truth. Let Dean make what he would of it.

His brothers brows raised. "Yeah?"

"Yes," Sam said, averting his gaze, "All right?"

Dean chewed at the inside of his cheeks. His eyes narrowed in thought. And then his lips curved into a grin. "I'm down with that."

Sam breathed in relief, "Good."

"So," Dean said, eyes alight as he wiggled his eyebrows at his brother, "There's this bikini bar we passed by on the way here."

Sam barked out a surprised laugh. Dean knew exactly how to make a situation more bearable. Granted, he always knew how to make them worse for Sam too, but in this instance, and more and more lately, he just did and said all the right things that would make Sam more comfortable and at as much ease as possible with their admittedly dismal situation. The only reason he failed miserably at offering true comfort was that the more he succeeded, the more it emphasized what would be lost, if he died.

"Just... don't embarrass me," Sam joked, "Behave. These women are New Yorkers, Dean. You'll be lucky if you get sued. Not so lucky if you get kicked in the nuts."

"Just don't cramp my style, college boy," Dean said, actually leading the way. It was not surprising at all that while Dean hated the roads and by-ways of Manhattan, and cussed like a Marine at the complex one-ways and cross-streets (numbered though they were), the way to a bikini bar would be crystal clear to his brother. He moved forward with no hesitation at all, as if the way were littered with breadcrumbs and lined with flowers.

Sam laughed at the thought, following his brother' stocky form as they slipped into single-file, since the sidewalks were so cramped and thick with people.

It was a nice, cool night. The Times Square area was so well-lit it could have been daytime. Gatherings of friends, families and tour groups crowded the ways, necessitating an element of weaving, just to be able to move forward. The tourists – and very few of them could have been anything else, since locals tended to steer away from the massively-peopled Square, unless it was to exploit business opportunities – looked a little bit overwhelmed, a little bit proud to be where they were, very much happy. Everyone was taking pictures, chatting in uncountable languages. It warmed him, eased his mind a little bit, allowed him to relax marginally. He slipped his hands into his pockets as he walked, and soaked in the sounds and scents, keeping an eye on his brother's back. He smiled, a little. Maybe things are going to be all right. He just needed a moment to breathe, and think, and --

_"You can't save him."_

He stopped dead in his tracks. The whisper had been real, undeniable to the point that he could remember, distinctly, the feeling of breath on his ear. His heart pounded.

Someone collided with his back. He whipped around, and an elderly tourist gave him a shy, apologetic smile and went on his way.

_"You should know that by now."_

Again, breath on his ear, just behind him, where he had previously faced. He whipped around again.

_"He's gonna start to hear them coming tonight."_

And again...

_"The dogs, you know... They're coming in close."_

And again...

_"They know his scent."_

And again.

_"They'll circle first, and then they'll close in, and then he's gone."_

It was getting hard to breathe. He turned, left, right, aimless. The colors and the people and the chatter was stifling.

"Are you all right?" a lady asked him, her voice slightly accented, another tourist, caught in this neon trap. He faced her, opened his mouth to reply, until her eyes darkened to inky, depth-less black, making him rear back and jerk away. She smiled at him slightly, and then the black softened to her usual color, and she just looked at him quizzically before walking away.

_"The hounds are closing in,"_ came the whisper again, from another indecipherable location. He turned randomly, finding another pair of inky black eyes on the face of a nameless tourist, drifting away from him.

_"You can't save him_."

This time it was an Asian teenager with a pink camera, winking at him before raising her device to take a shot of her friends.

_"No one can."_

An elderly, heavily-accented British couple, in unison, before stepping inside a restaurant.

He whipped around, and around, until his gaze settled on the misplaced, solitary figure of a heavy-set, balding Caucasian man in a rumpled, brown day suit standing on the street. His tie had food stains. He looked like your ordinary, aging, dissatisfied, stranded, stagnated office employee, except his eyes blazed laser red for a few seconds as he stared at Sam.

Time seemed to stretch. The neon lights around them lengthened to bright, slow-moving, indulgent lasers. The chatter dulled. People moved around and seemingly _through_ them.

_"You know Times Square," the man said, and he had this dull, slightly high-pitched voice, "Is just like a crossroads."_

_Sam's heart pounded heavily in his chest, but he was Winchester through and through, sometimes probably more than Dean himself, and he steeled his face fearlessly. "You? A Crossroads Demon?"_

_The heavy-set man shrugged. "Some of us are disgruntled employees, Sam. But I guess, they sent me to you because I don't need to be pretty to sell you what you need. Easy sell, overpriced water in the desert. We're gonna stop pretending you have any sort of choice anymore."_

_"Insult to injury?" Sam asked, tightly._

_"Wit," the Dissatisfied Crossroads Demon snorted, sounding mildly surprised, "I did not expect that. Anyway, everyone knows what you did with that last dealer who came your way. I think they're all hoping you'd shoot me."_

_"You do kind of ruin the look of the club, don't you?" Sam snapped._

_The man shrugged again. "No need to be snide. I can tell you won't be playing tonight, Sam. But you'll seek me out eventually, and I'll be here. You get Dean's contract, if you play for our side. Your brother alive, and you to inherit the world. Pretty solid deal, if you ask me. But you don't have to. Ask anyone. 'Sides... as I said, you've got no choice, really. There isn't going to be a cop-out ending out of this, Sam. No angel or god to save your brother at the last moment. It's just all about action and consequence. He chose, so he dies--"_

"Hey!"

Sam turned, and found Dean there beside him, looking at him worriedly, clutching his shoulder. He looked back at where the Dissatisfied Crossroads Demon had stood. He was not surprised to find him gone.

"Hey," Dean said again, more gently, "Everything all right?"

Sam ran a shaky, weary hand over his face. _No_.

"I lost you for a moment there," he replied, mouth dry.

Dean looked wary, but also amused, "Jeez, Sam, what the hell are you, six? Come on," he said, grabbing his brother by the sleeve of his jacket and dragging him along. Not letting go. Not caring about single-filing anymore, he just pushed his way forward, Sam's sleeve in an unyielding grip, not at all willing to let his brother get lost again.

Sam wanted to cry right then and there.

" " "

_He's gonna start hearing them tonight_.

Sam couldn't sleep. Wouldn't sleep. He knew what that whispering demon had meant at the taunt. Dean would be hearing the sounds of hungry hell hounds closing in, starting tonight. He wouldn't be able to hear them himself, but Dean shouldn't have to face that alone.

He laid awake in bed, listening to his brother breathe. He marveled at it, sometimes, how Dean could just... _sleep_. Problems and thoughts and cases and he could just sleep. He'd sleep in the car, sleep on a bed, a table, a chair... heck, Sam bet he could sleep standing up too. It was his inviolable ability. Once, even at the fatal threat of falling into the trap of a dream-walking psychopath, he just _had_ to sleep. It was partly strategy, sure, but more than anything, Sam would have bet that Dean was just getting annoyed at not being able to, and wanted it over with.

He never had that talent. Granted, he was plagued by far more discouraging dreams, but he was also so much less detached with things, tended to internalize them in the nightly quiet. A lot of things kept Sam awake, even when he was a kid. It was Dean's breathing that soothed him, a lot of the time, even back then. He'd listen, and try to match it.

Sam knew the precise moment that Dean heard the first sounds of his merciless escorts to hell, when he gasped and shot up awake, hunting knife in hand, breathless.

Sam knew better than to head over there right away. He let his brother catch his breath, gather his bearings. He can't help Dean if he got accidentally stabbed by an understandably panicked hunter, after all.

Sam watched his brother in the dark. White-knuckled grip on the knife. Wide eyes, struggling to calm. A sheen of sweat. His fingers released the weapon stiffly, forcibly, and he laid it down on the bed, almost uncharacteristically compulsively, putting it back in its hiding place beneath his pillow. He was moving slowly, very deliberately, as if he was battling something inside of him. And then suddenly, he moved quickly, throwing himself over the bed and running to the bathroom as fast as his shaky legs could carry him. He shut the door. Sam's heart shattered at the sound of his nervous retching.

He closed his eyes, and took a deep breath.

_He's shit-scared._

_He should be._

_So am I._

_What am I supposed to do?_

He turned on the lamp at the night table that separated their beds. He stood up, grabbed a bottle of water from their stash, placed the contents in a clear glass from the pantry of the small motel room, and laid it on the table. He sat on Dean's bed, head in his hands as he waited for his brother to come out of the bathroom.

The retching had stopped. He knew that by the open lights, Dean would have already guessed that he was awake too. He heard the tap run. That was Dean washing his face and his mouth. But more than anything, he guessed that was Dean buying time to think about what to say to him.

"You all right?" Sam asked with a wince, when Dean finally emerged from the bathroom.

"I think I overate."

_Bit off more than you can chew, more like_, Sam thought. He debated, for a long moment, whether or not he should just let Dean get away with that.

_No time_, he decided.

"I know you heard them," Sam said, softly, "The dogs."

Dean took a moment too, apparently also weighing in on whether or not he should just lie. He came to the same decision Sam had. He sank to sit next to Sam.

"Yeah..." he admitted, "But they're just trying to be assholes. We all know they ain't coming down 'til d-day. They're just trying to psych me out. They got me tonight, but I know better now."

"Water," Sam said, his own mouth dry, his mind wrangled-empty of things to say. He motioned numbly for the glass he had prepared for his brother.

"You look like you need it more than me," Dean teased, gently, though he took the glass, took a sip he did not need to appease his brother, having already had his fill in the bathroom.

"You should go back to sleep," Sam said, looking at Dean earnestly, "I got your back."

Dean opened his mouth, as if to say something. But he clamped it shut, after a long look at his brother's steely-determined face. Sam knew what he would have said. Dean would have said it was useless, Dean would have said there was nothing Sam could do to stop the hounds from coming. That Sam having Dean's back tonight meant absolutely nothing to a hungry hellhound. Dean would have been right. But he let his younger brother hold the carefully-constructed, by-now-fairly-ridiculous delusion.

"Thanks, bro," Dean said, his eyes clouded, as he reached over and closed the night lamp. He settled down to bed, on his belly, and face turned decidedly away from Sam. Sam stayed where he was, on Dean's bed by his arm, until he heard the ease return to his brother's sleepy breathing.

And then Sam sank cross-legged to the floor, back against his brother's bed, as if he was something disgusting and viscous pouring down to the ground.

And then he cried.

Soundless, anguished, carefully controlled crying, the way he's lately learned how. There were no hitched breaths, no embarrassing sniffing, no trembling shoulders. It was just a crippling, hopeless, flooded, pouring gaze contradicted by inhumanly even breaths. No one could have known, he'd have sworn, he was so damned sure, _No one_.

Dean's warm hand wordlessly and gracelessly dropped down on top of his head. Ruffled his hair for a second or two, and then stilled and stayed there.

No one could have known, apparently, except the one who knew him best, the one whom the show was for, rendering the entire exercise absolutely useless after all.

He clenched his eyes closed tight, and let his tears fall more violently. Allowed himself to breathe harshly. Dean's hand never wavered, just stayed where it was. All damn night, it was warm, and comforting, and just _there_. He fell asleep where he was.

To Be Continued...

**Note:**

**Shout out** to all who read **"The Right Stuff,"** especially reviewers Enkidu07, pussy galore, heather03nmg, Mad Server, deangirl1, PADavis, Ster1, Youngest Ones Rule, zuimar, anon, ziggy.uk, JuDei, Stoneage Woman, PhoenixDragonDreamer, and Dante007. Your reviews keep me motivated, especially those who also reviewed **"Things We Know."**

I get so inspired by this new (for me at least) fandom and its passionate readers and writers that right now, haha, I'm working on three stories at the same time. I really hope I get to finish even just one of them, haha. The fic I previewed in the afterword of _Things We Know_, called **"Road to Hell"** hasn't even been posted yet and already I've been distracted by two other plots, **"One Week"** above, and **"Least I Can Do"** which has the following summary:

_Whenever he doubted himself,he drew on the memory of his son,battered but unbeaten on the stand,telling Social Services to screw themselves & just give him back to the best dad in the world.Dean is 17 and Sam is 13.The Winchesters fight to stay together._

We'll see how far any of this gets. I try to write a good deal of stuff before posting so that readers don't have to wait too long. I comfort myself with the idea that Chapter 1: Seven above was actually originally written out as a one-shot so if I never get to publish Chapter 2, then it should still stand on its own, haha.

Anyway, c&c's always welcome. 'Til the next post!


End file.
